Microsoft at CES: Not much new to talk about

As Microsoft’s opening keynote for the International Consumer Electronics Show was winding down tonight, Gartner Research analyst Michael Gartenberg tweeted at Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s head PR guy:

@fxshaw show me something new please

I retweeted it; it seemed to sum up the keynote nicely. After juicy rumors gurgled online for days leading up to the event, Microsoft today gave techies little to chew on as they prepared for a weekend of gadgets and nerdery in Las Vegas.

But then Shaw, as CEO Steve Ballmer helped demo on stage a future version of Windows for pocket-sized devices, sent the following reply to Gartenberg and me:

@njeaton @Gartenberg showed you new games, new entertainment on Kinect, new sales figures, new PCs, now next gen windows…greedy greedy.

Greedy? Perhaps. Perhaps people expected too much of Microsoft, or let the rumors get the best of them. Perhaps Microsoft was holding back after last year, when Ballmer jumped the gun by showing Windows tablets that never really went anywhere. Perhaps Microsoft is in line with most of its fellow CES exhibitors, which are showing more updated products than they are dropping bombs.

Here’s a big accomplishment: Microsoft, which had expected to sell 5 million Xbox Kinect sensors, said it sold shipped 8 million to retailers in the first 60 days worldwide. Remarkable.

(Updated:Microsoft clarified the figure was Kinects shipped, not sold directly to consumers. Updated again: To clarify, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg tweeted: “We have no channel inventory, so essentially the same #….every Kinect we make we sell.”)

Two more nice numbers: Microsoft has sold more than 50 million Xbox consoles worldwide, and there are more than 30 million members of the Xbox Live gaming network.

More news from CES: Hulu Plus, which already is available on Sony’s PlayStation 3, will come to the Xbox 360 this spring. It will support Kinect gesture controls — as will Netflix when that Xbox app is updated this spring. And also coming this spring is Avatar Kinect, a service by which gamers can talk with their friends in a virtual chat room via their Xbox avatars.

Then came Microsoft’s presentation on Windows Phone 7, the mobile operating system that launched in North America in November with AT&T and T-Mobile. The Redmond-based company hasn’t released WP7 sales numbers (though said 1.5 million units have shipped to retailers), and passed up the opportunity again at CES. Not the best of signs.

It seemed Ballmer tried to address that by explaining that most people he talks to like Windows Phone 7 and its novel user interface — they just have to play around with it first.

“People need to see it,” he said. “We think people need to see the phone, then they fall in love with it.”

More people will have the opportunity when Windows Phone 7 devices launch on Verizon and Sprint, which Ballmer announced will be happening during the first half of 2011. Microsoft also will be updating the software with copy-paste support and improved app-launching and app-switching (though he didn’t mention multitasking).

The meat of Microsoft’s CES keynote came with the PC demos, which were nothing special. The new Surface is four inches thick and not as “big-ass”? Neat, but it’s hardly a consumer gadget. Windows 7 runs on a PC with Intel’s new CPU-GPU combo chip? Cool. Internet Explorer 9’s hardware-accelerated graphics work great on an HP netbook? Great. Samsung’s new PC7 tablet runs Windows 7 and has a slide-out keyboard? Nice.

Wait. What about all the other tablets? Y’know, all the iPad competitors people have been talking about all week?

Well, a few Windows 7 tablets have been announced in Las Vegas, but Microsoft apparently is letting those companies do the CES legwork. Instead, Microsoft decided to focus on its announcement that it’s working on a new version of Windows that supports the low-power chips found in most mobile devices.

Microsoft, by not talking about today’s tablets but droning on and on about future technology, downplayed and almost patronized the Windows 7 slates being released now. I know Microsoft wants people to buy Windows tablets today, but Ballmer & Co. don’t seem to be making that great of a case for it.

The software superpower did stick to its message: Three screens and the cloud. Television, mobile and PC all connected to the Web — “whatever devices you use, now or in the future, Windows will be there,” Ballmer said.

Indeed. This we know, but thank you for the reassurance.

What we don’t know is why Microsoft is still opening CES. It announced some updates. It announced some projects. It talked about existing products. Yes, Kinect is going gangbusters — but Microsoft did not put on a consumer-electronics show tonight.